Pathway

Chapter 225: Burden Of The Beast

Cerest was an angelic blight on the idyllic scene, Chang Chang thought. She could see how anyone, man or woman, human or elf, would be taken with him. His face, in its symmetry, was more beautiful than any she'd ever seen. He motioned to her family, his face bright with exhilaration.

The camp broke up. Chang Wei left the venison smoking in the grass. Her mother scooped her younger self up in her arms and tossed her over one shoulder. Her delighted squeals trailed away down the hill toward the tower.

Don't do it. Don't go. Stay, and be with me always. Chang Chang got to her feet and followed her family. She tried to run, but the tower seemed always at a safe distance from her footsteps, and no shout would reach the ears of the living memories before her.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was inside the tower, just as she had been in every nightmare that had haunted her from childhood.

This time, she was no spectator. She resided in the body of her younger self. She could feel the cool ground beneath her bare feet, and the shadows swirling around her had form and substance. They were her family. Her father was taking scrapings from the brittle stone walls and placing them in vials on his belt. Her mother was chanting in an undertone, her hands on the spine of what had once been a massive tome. The spine was all that remained. Her mother's eyes were closed. Yellow light encircled her fingers.

Her mothera wizard! Chang Chang couldn't believe it. Her mother had carried the gift of the Art, and Chang Chang had inherited it. Gods, how much her mother could have taught her, guided her, if she had lived to see to her daughter's tutelage.

"Be cautious," said a voice.

The sudden interruption jarred Chang Chang from her thoughts. She looked to see who had spoken and saw Chang Wei standing next to her mother.

"It's all right," her mother said. She touched Chang Wei's arm. "I sense no pockets here. Cerest was right. The plague has abandoned this place. Have you found anything?" she asked, addressing her husband.

"Where's Cerest gone to?" Chang Wei asked.

"I think he's putting out the campfire," her mother said. She touched Chang Wei's cheek affectionately. "I expect we forgot to douse it in our excitement."

Chang Chang only half-listened to the rest of the conversation; her attention was caught by the ruined book. She got on her knees and turned her head to see the letters on the spine. They were outlined in blue fire, the edges of the script blurring and fluttering like wings on a dying butterfly.

As she watched, the flames punctured the leather binding, leaving blackened curls in their wake. The smell of charred leather rose in her nostrils. She looked up, and saw that her mother was watching the book too. Her eyes widened, and the color drained from her lovely face.

Chang Chang, hampered by her younger body, could not get to her mother. She tripped over a pile of wood and fell. Her face caught the sunlight coming from a gaping hole in the tower ceiling. The light beating down was too intense. The ground had been cold only a breath ago, yet everywhere around her she felt heat. It was like she'd stepped into the middle of the campfire.

"Chang Chang."

She heard her mother's voice. It had never sounded like that before. With a child's certainty and an adult's memory, Chang Chang knew this was the end.

The spellplague pocket, awakened by her mother's simple magic, swirled to life from the rafters of the ruined tower ceiling. A cerulean cloud that looked like a tiny, confined thunderstorm, it crawled along the walls, finding cracks in the stone and exploding them, spraying shards of rock on the helpless people below.

Someone was at her side, hauling her roughly under a cloak.

"Get her out!" she heard her mother scream. Then her voice faded. Chang Chang was running, running on legs that didn't belong to her. Chang Wei had picked her up. The blue fire was everywherein her eyes, her mouth. She was blind. She couldn't see either of her parents.

They broke free into daylight, but the blue fire wasn't done with them. It stretched out hungry tendrils and snared her hair and her arms. Chang Wei dropped her to the grass.

She started to cry. The heat was too intense. It was the worst sunburn she'd ever had. Her flesh should be melting from her bones. She heard Chang Wei next to her, screaming. She reached for him, but she couldn't touch him. The blue light was everywhere. There were other screams, shouts her young mind couldn't comprehend but that the adult Chang Chang recognized as the Yaoan language.

Cerest was nearby, crying out in agony. His beautiful face was melting and being reforged into something new, a visage that more closely matched his soul. Chang Chang curled up in a ball on the grass and waited for it to be over. She didn't care if she died, as long as the pain stopped.

Oblivion came, sweeping its cool hand across her body. She was resting in a dark place. She wanted to sleep there forever. To wake was to re-enter that world of horrid pain.

When she opened her eyes again, she was still on the ground. She could see the tip of the tower, weirdly, in her peripheral vision, as she stared up at the sky. Star and moonlight illuminated the scene now, and somewhere, far off, she smelled another campfire burning.

Chang Wei leaned over her, adding another blanket to a growing pile on her small body. Her nose was cold. Chang Wei's breath fogged in the night air.

"Is she awake?" It was Cerest's voice. He spoke in the human tongue. He sounded weak.

Chang Wei didn't reply. He stroked her cheek, and threaded his fingers in her hair to push it away from her face.

He looked broken, the adult Chang Chang remembered. Gone were the light-hearted smile and the fringes of youth that she'd seen by the campfire. They had been replaced by a tremendous weight and sadness.

She reached up to touch him. His skin was warm, his moustache hair brittle. He smelled like smoke. It was no campfire that burned, only the remnants of the Chutan Towerthe funeral pyre for her parents.

When Chang Wei left her at last, she crawled out from under the blankets and walked to the tower. Chang Wei called to her, screamed for her to stop. But she couldn't. Her parents were somewhere in the wreck of stones.

The tower's collapsed wall was a black blemish on the landscape. Scorch marks sprayed out from it in jagged, oily streaks. Viewed from above, the tower might have been a stygian sun.

Chang Wei was still screaming. He's injured, Chang Chang thought, or he'd be running after me. I am wrong for leaving him. But she couldn't make her feet stop walking.

She caught her foot on a rock. When she looked down, she realized the rock was a hand, clutching her ankle. The fingernails were black, the palms blistered and oozing white pus.

Frightened, Chang Chang jerked away. She followed the arm attached to the hand and found Cerest, curled on the ground. He had one arm thrown across his face. The appendage was out of its socket. His other arm stretched toward her, trying to stop her.

Chang Chang looked at that blistered, trembling hand for a long time before she turned and resumed her long journey to the tower.

The stones vibrated with a power beyond sun-warmth. Everything was cold now, but she could feel where the energy had been. When her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the tower, Chang Chang could see there was nothing left. Her mother's hair, her father's spectaclesthe spellplague had burned them to ash.

She touched the blackened stones, caught the ash-falls drifting through the air. Illuminated in moonlight, they might have been dust or the remains of flesh. She caught as many as she could in her small hands and clutched them against her chest. She started to cry and found she was too dehydrated for the tears to form.

Carefully, she got down on her hands and knees and placed her cheek against the ground. The ash stirred and warmed her skin. She stayed there, imagining her mother's arms around her, while Chang Wei screamed for her outside the tower.

Boa Long was a patient man, and his office demanded discipline, but, as he surveyed the wraiths circling the distant Ferryman's Tau, he concluded that he'd been patient long enough.

"That's the place," he said.

"Can we trust him?" Tao Li asked.

The Warden thought of Tarvin, his head crushed by a plank. His body had been borne away to the Watch barracks and then to his family.

He surveyed the group of men and women that stood before him in homespun disguises. Their eyes flitted between the Ferryman's Tau and his face.

"You know what's expected of you," he said. "If any man or woman among you feels he cannot perform his duty, you may accompany Tarvin's body back to the barracks. I look you in the eyes and ask this plainly: will you see justice done?"

A chorus of "ayes" answered him. As promised, he stared each of them in the eyes, hunting deceit. He found none, and was satisfied.

"On the boats," he said. "'Ware the wraiths, but Chang Chang is the one you want. Bring her in."